Watching Entities

Go Automate can watch a Home Assistant entity and print its state every time it changes. This powers shell scripts and status-bar modules that react to your home in real time.

Note

Watch commands take the full entity ID, including its domain, for example input_boolean.guest_mode or sensor.living_room_temperature. This is different from the control commands, which take the name without the domain.

Two ways to watch

• Through the bridge (recommended) — ha bridge watch entity connects to the shared bridge, so many watchers reuse one connection to Home Assistant. This is the best choice for status bars and long-running watchers.
• Direct (troubleshooting only) — ha watch entity opens its own WebSocket connection. It uses the bridge by default and only falls back to a direct connection if the bridge is unavailable. Force a direct connection with --direct when debugging.

Caution

Direct connections open a new WebSocket per watcher and increase network usage. Prefer the bridge for anything that runs continuously. Start it with go-automate ha bridge serve.

Watch through the bridge

go-automate ha bridge watch entity input_boolean.guest_mode

The watcher prints the current state immediately, then prints again on every change. Pass --socket to use a non-default bridge socket path:

go-automate ha bridge watch entity input_boolean.guest_mode --socket /tmp/go-automate-ha.sock

Watch directly

ha watch entity uses the bridge when it can and falls back to a direct connection otherwise:

go-automate ha watch entity sensor.living_room_temperature

Force a direct connection for troubleshooting with --direct:

go-automate ha watch entity sensor.living_room_temperature --direct

Status bars

Add --bar-json to emit machine-readable JSON lines instead of plain text. Each line is an object with text, tooltip and class that any status bar, shell or script can consume, including Waybar and Quickshell. See Bar JSON for the full output contract and every flag.

go-automate ha bridge watch entity input_boolean.guest_mode \
  --bar-json \
  --text-on "Guest" \
  --tooltip-on "Guest mode is on" \
  --tooltip-off "Guest mode is off" \
  --class-on "active" \
  --hide-off

Tip

When the output is consumed by a status bar or another program, always use --bar-json. Without it, Go Automate prints plain text and warns that machine consumers should switch to JSON.

For the full output contract, every --bar-json flag and a complete Waybar module, see Bar JSON.

Connection flags differ by command:

Flag	Command	Effect
--socket	ha bridge watch entity	Path to the bridge socket.
--direct	ha watch entity	Bypass the bridge and connect directly.
--bridge-socket	ha watch entity	Path to the bridge socket to try before falling back.

Next steps

• See Bar JSON to wire a watcher into a status bar.
• Make sure the bridge is running for the lowest network usage.
• See the Bridge Protocol for how watchers talk to the bridge.